Chest of Colors forum

hey guys
well I finally finish the renovations on the house and it is on the market
now I can spend some time on minis so with out further ado here is my first attempt at a dread it is a ebay item so please let me know what you think and also we purchaed a new camera (a DSLR) my wife needed it for uni so now I can play with it, but I have to work out how to use it and if anyone can point me in the right direction of some tuts it would be appreciated
thanks jason
Click to see full-sized image
Click to see full-sized image
Click to see full-sized image
Click to see full-sized image

I think the photo now is a bit blurry, you need to make the photos with a timer and camera tripod.
As for the dread I would add a bit rust and mud or dirt to make it more interesting.

I would have gone brighter on top to create a bit of a zenithal lightning like you did on that Space Marine squad (I think it was yours wasn't it?).

For the camera:

Tripod and timer like sea.man said and also try to put the cam a bit away from the mini and not completely close. Use your objective lens then to zoom in.

If you take pictures in RAW you can adjust brightness/contrast/sharpness way better than with any JPEG so if you didn't already, give it a try.

For camera settings - I'm usually taking pictures with a F-stop 9 or 11 and ISO100. Though if you don't have a tripod use something around ISO800 or even higher depending on how much your cam can handle without getting a "pixelated" image otherwise your exposure time will be way too high to get a sharp freehand picture. Higher ISO-level means a higher light-sensitivity -> smaller exposure time but there's a limit on what a cam can handle without messing up your pictures (you often see the problem with a too high set ISO-level with pictures that were taken in the night where later when looking at them you see colored pixels on the pic).

Exposure time depends on your F-stop setting and also background. Your camera should have a built-in scale which is a suggestion on when the camera thinks that the exposure time will work with the given motive. But don't always trust that built-in scale, if you take pictures with a black background you want to go about -1 on that scale when setting up exposure time.

White-Balance - automatic white balance works fine for me if you want you could take a picture of a piece of white paper with the same light setting and surrounding your miniature will later have and set it as custom WB.

Metering mode - just try some if your camera has it try spot metering for your miniatures. Mine unfortunately doesn't have it so I'm using center-weighted average metering.

Hope this helps you a bit.

Thanks guys
p1per: thanks for all the camera tips I tried them and here are the pics I am much happier with the results
thanks again jason

so olimpus 410
you get it with: ZUIKO Digital 14 - 42 mm F3.5 - F5.6 ?? (i assune so as exif pop up 28 -84 )
i would sey set it on 50mm to get nice mini photos but as Olimpus got its own sensor design i got problem with instant calculacion - somwer in the midle (usualy ther KIT lences are sharpest ) end not at 4F nor 5.6 - this got quite narow point of focus
like p1per pointed try higher .. dunt rymember thous lences optimal F - need to check - dont work often with olimpus
- edit : checked 42- optimal 8f , 35 - badly betwen 5,6 end 8 but strange field of focus (end awesome chroma aberation - disapear at 11 .. with sharpnes tho orrather with resolution )
25- best at f5.6 (sharp center end modrate blury corners ) moust even et f8 (sharp over all ) 18 mm - 5,6 f
over all good lences (much better then Sony DT 18-70mm 1:3.5-5.6 )

so about dred photo - it is large mini - i would try to cach im sharp at F8 for smaler minis 5.6 (why this dont have usual 7.1 ??? )

painting - big gun looks boring , no wethering no actual shading just metal + some black it caind of stand s out from the rest of mini

Edit :
Turn off Noise filter option on 100 it just blurs out pictures in annoing way (or set it on "low")

Nice paintjob!

I only have two minor comments:

1) gaps in the weapons should be filled in ideally, but only if this were a competition level piece
2) in my opinion the armour lacks some edge highlighting...

thanks guys
maru thanks for all the help setting up the camera and thanks for all the reaserched info